Brief History and Instrumental Individuals in Autism
Leo Kanner
Back in 1943, Dr. Leo Kanner (1894-1981) of John Hopkins University published the paper, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” in the Journal Nervous Child. He described the behaviour of 11 children. Observing one of the children, Donald T., Kanner remarks, “He seems to be self-satisfied. He has no apparent affection when petted. He does not observe the fact that anyone comes or goes, and never seems glad to see father or mother or any playmate. He seems almost to draw into his shell and live within himself.” In describing these children, Kanner used the word “autism” from the Greek word “auto” meaning “self”. Kanner’s choice of “autism” perhaps had only been used once before in the field of disabilities and that in reference to schizophrenia. Unfortunately, autism has been erroneously confused with childhood schizophrenia perhaps due in part to the initial use of the word autism with schizophrenia. To be sure, autism and schizophrenia are different!
Even in this very earliest 1943 description of autism, Kanner emphasizes the role biology plays in the cause of autism affirming, “The children’s aloneness from the beginning of life makes it difficult to attribute the whole picture exclusively to the type of the early parental relations with our patients…We must, then assume that these children have come into the world with innate inability to form the usual biologically provided affective contact with people” (p. 50).
Hans Asperger
At the very time Kanner was studying the 11 children in Baltimore, Maryland, the Vienna-born Dr. Hans Asperger (1906-1980) was studying 200 families with children who had similarity to the children Kanner was observing except that they appeared not to have the severe language delays. In 1944, he published an article in German that was only translated into English in 1989. Although the term, “Asperger’s Syndrome” was first used in 1981 by the British psychiatrist Lorna Wing whose daughter is diagnosed with autism, the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th edition, uses the term “Asperger’s disorder."
Bruno Bettelheim
Unfortunately, understandings of autism took a turn for the worse under the leadership of Bruno Bettelheim. Dr. Bettelheim an Austrian-born art historian eventually became the director of the Orthogenic School, a home for disturbed children associated with the University of Chicago. Richard Pollack’s 1997 biography of Bettelheim, The Creation of Dr. B, seriously calls into question Bettelheim’s credibility. While we haven’t included this book in our recommended reading list, it is a very well written and a meticulously researched biography. It was Bettelheim’s theory that children became autistic because of cold and emotionally distant mothers, women he referred to as “refrigerator mothers”. Rather than seeing autism as the neurological condition it is, Bettelheim blamed emotionally distant mothers as the cause of autism, a stigma that hasn’t totally disappeared. We have heard many parents blame themselves for doing or not doing something at some critical stage in their own child’s development. Fortunately, the effect of Bettelheim’s parent blaming encountered a serious setback beginning in the mid 1960’s.
Bernard Rimland
A psychologist and parent of a child with autism did not agree with Bettelheim that the cause of his son’s autism was due to either his or his wife’s parenting skills and took serious aim at the “refrigerator mother” theory. In 1964, Bernard Rimland published, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and It’s Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior. Rimland stressed the plausibility of a biological basis for autism. The publication of Rimland’s book marks a turn toward our present understanding that autism as a neurological disorder—that is, it is biologically based. Parenting style has nothing to do with the cause of autism. 30 years later, Rimland strongly insisted, “ Autism is a biological disorder, not an emotional illness. Refuse psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and intensive counseling. These approaches are useless” (Health Counselor Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 6; June/July 1994).
Ole Ivar Lovaas
Perhaps most well known, Ole Ivar Lovaas, was a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Lovaas began working with older children with autism in the same decade that Skinner wrote his now famous, Science and Human Behavior text in 1953. Lovaas began to apply the experimental behaviour analysis developed by Skinner to people with autism. Unfortunately, Lovaas achieved limited success at first. However, he refocused his efforts on children under the age of 5, placed the implementation of treatment in the child’s own home and increased the intensity (a measurement of the amount of “therapy time”) to about 40 hours weekly. In one of Lovaas’ studies, 47% of the children in the study (9 children) made remarkable progress to the point of becoming “recovered”, while a further 42% (8 children) made significant improvements. Even still, however, 11% made little to no gains. Lovaas wrote a user friendly manual, Teaching Developmentally Disabled Children: The Me Book in 1981. In 2002, Lovaas wrote, Teaching Individuals With Developmental Delays: Basic Intervention Techniques . Lovaas has published more than 70 publications throughout his career.
Back in 1943, Dr. Leo Kanner (1894-1981) of John Hopkins University published the paper, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” in the Journal Nervous Child. He described the behaviour of 11 children. Observing one of the children, Donald T., Kanner remarks, “He seems to be self-satisfied. He has no apparent affection when petted. He does not observe the fact that anyone comes or goes, and never seems glad to see father or mother or any playmate. He seems almost to draw into his shell and live within himself.” In describing these children, Kanner used the word “autism” from the Greek word “auto” meaning “self”. Kanner’s choice of “autism” perhaps had only been used once before in the field of disabilities and that in reference to schizophrenia. Unfortunately, autism has been erroneously confused with childhood schizophrenia perhaps due in part to the initial use of the word autism with schizophrenia. To be sure, autism and schizophrenia are different!
Even in this very earliest 1943 description of autism, Kanner emphasizes the role biology plays in the cause of autism affirming, “The children’s aloneness from the beginning of life makes it difficult to attribute the whole picture exclusively to the type of the early parental relations with our patients…We must, then assume that these children have come into the world with innate inability to form the usual biologically provided affective contact with people” (p. 50).
At the very time Kanner was studying the 11 children in Baltimore, Maryland, the Vienna-born Dr. Hans Asperger (1906-1980) was studying 200 families with children who had similarity to the children Kanner was observing except that they appeared not to have the severe language delays. In 1944, he published an article in German that was only translated into English in 1989. Although the term, “Asperger’s Syndrome” was first used in 1981 by the British psychiatrist Lorna Wing whose daughter is diagnosed with autism, the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th edition, uses the term “Asperger’s disorder."
Unfortunately, understandings of autism took a turn for the worse under the leadership of Bruno Bettelheim. Dr. Bettelheim an Austrian-born art historian eventually became the director of the Orthogenic School, a home for disturbed children associated with the University of Chicago. Richard Pollack’s 1997 biography of Bettelheim, The Creation of Dr. B, seriously calls into question Bettelheim’s credibility. While we haven’t included this book in our recommended reading list, it is a very well written and a meticulously researched biography. It was Bettelheim’s theory that children became autistic because of cold and emotionally distant mothers, women he referred to as “refrigerator mothers”. Rather than seeing autism as the neurological condition it is, Bettelheim blamed emotionally distant mothers as the cause of autism, a stigma that hasn’t totally disappeared. We have heard many parents blame themselves for doing or not doing something at some critical stage in their own child’s development. Fortunately, the effect of Bettelheim’s parent blaming encountered a serious setback beginning in the mid 1960’s.
A psychologist and parent of a child with autism did not agree with Bettelheim that the cause of his son’s autism was due to either his or his wife’s parenting skills and took serious aim at the “refrigerator mother” theory. In 1964, Bernard Rimland published, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and It’s Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior. Rimland stressed the plausibility of a biological basis for autism. The publication of Rimland’s book marks a turn toward our present understanding that autism as a neurological disorder—that is, it is biologically based. Parenting style has nothing to do with the cause of autism. 30 years later, Rimland strongly insisted, “ Autism is a biological disorder, not an emotional illness. Refuse psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and intensive counseling. These approaches are useless” (Health Counselor Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 6; June/July 1994).
Perhaps most well known, Ole Ivar Lovaas, was a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Lovaas began working with older children with autism in the same decade that Skinner wrote his now famous, Science and Human Behavior text in 1953. Lovaas began to apply the experimental behaviour analysis developed by Skinner to people with autism. Unfortunately, Lovaas achieved limited success at first. However, he refocused his efforts on children under the age of 5, placed the implementation of treatment in the child’s own home and increased the intensity (a measurement of the amount of “therapy time”) to about 40 hours weekly. In one of Lovaas’ studies, 47% of the children in the study (9 children) made remarkable progress to the point of becoming “recovered”, while a further 42% (8 children) made significant improvements. Even still, however, 11% made little to no gains. Lovaas wrote a user friendly manual, Teaching Developmentally Disabled Children: The Me Book in 1981. In 2002, Lovaas wrote, Teaching Individuals With Developmental Delays: Basic Intervention Techniques . Lovaas has published more than 70 publications throughout his career.